Ottawa to spend over $3M on mental health, addictions support in northwestern Ontario

The federal government says it will spend more than $3 million to support mental health and addictions outreach efforts in northwestern Ontario.

Ya'ara Saks, federal minister of mental health and addictions and associate minister of health, made the announcement on Friday in Thunder Bay, Ont., at city hall.

The city has the highest opioid-related death rate in the province, according to the latest information from the Office of the Chief Coroner. At a rate of 78.16 deaths per 100,000 population in the first half of 2024, that's more than five times the provincial average of 15.7 deaths per 100,000 population.

As the region's only supervised consumption site, Path 525, closes at the end of March in Thunder Bay, a new Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) Hub is slated to open in its place.

"I know how much this community cares about saving lives and being on the front and centre in northern Ontario of the overdose crisis in the illicit toxic drug supply that is harming so many communities," Saks said.

"There's too many Canadians who lost their lives to this tragic and unrelenting public health crisis that has touched the lives of too many families, friends, neighbours and loved ones."

More than $838,000 will go to the Elizabeth Fry Society of Northwestern Ontario (EFSNWO) through the Substance Use and Addictions Program. Three other projects are getting funding from the Emergency Treatment Fund:

• $237,960 for the City of Thunder Bay and NorWest Community Health Centres (NWCHC) to expand mobile outreach services and create an encampment response team.
• $1,909,367 for Marten Falls First Nation to provide a mobile response unit for crisis outreach, counselling, culturally-relevant programming, and connections to treatment. 
• $141,875 for Beendigen Inc. to purchase a community mobile unit to offer harm reduction services.

In all, the Emergency Treatment Fund includes more than $11 million for 14 projects across Canada, Saks said. More than 350 project applications were received, over 70 per cent of which came from Indigenous communities.

"Meeting people where they are at with programs and projects that make sense, that open doors, that help people when they need it in that moment," said Saks. 

"Because if it's not today that we help them, if it's not today that we don't talk, that we don't reach out to them, what will happen tomorrow?"

Outreach work and on-site support

Rilee Willianen, the city's encampment response lead, said the new encampment response team will allow the city to lead outreach efforts in tent communities, supporting its human rights based approach to homelessness. 

"[It] will connect with the folks who are living in the encampments and build relationships with them so eventually, they can be in a place to improve their circumstances," Willianen said. "This funding will help support us to do that, which will help us then to address encampments, which also then helps to address public health and public safety concerns."

While a number of organizations provide support at the city's encampments already, Willianen said having the city partner with NWCHC allows it to expand its involvement in an effective and appropriate way.

"One of our benefits as a smaller community is that we all work really well together, so this is just a further demonstration of how important it is to work together and to continue doing that work in a good way."

As for the EFSNWO, executive director Lindsay Martin said the funding is supporting the operational costs of hiring more staff; namely, a substance use health co-ordinator, two full-time peer support workers and one part-time peer support worker.

The organization supports women and gender-diverse people involved in the criminal justice system, many of whom are experiencing homelessness, mental health or addiction issues. 

The staff members will be at EFSNWO's transitional housing units to provide on-site support, Martin said.

"It will be really impactful to help support the key population of those leaving incarceration and those who are unhoused and to be able to support them on their substance use journey in an alternative sort of non-clinical type of way," they explained.

The organization takes a harm reduction approach to addiction, which means supporting people who are in active addiction by reducing the harms around  substance use. Examples of this are providing new needles, sterile drug equipment, and naloxone kits which are used to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose.

While the province has scaled back harm reduction with the upcoming closure of supervised consumption sites — as HART hubs will not allow supervised drug consumption, needle exchange or safer supply programs — Martin said it's an integral part of addiction services.

"It's really key to be able to support them wherever they're at on their journey and not always directing somebody into a formatted, prescribed, forced recovery process when they're not necessarily ready," said Martin.

"It's not about what a government's looking for. It's not a public health directive. It's individual."